Monday, September 6, 2010

Colours and Healers

This field study assessed reliability and validity of healers’’
(n =5) professional schemes of reference for colours, related
to clients’ physical/emotional states and treatment needs.
Healers are believed to base therapy on coherent systems that
associate alleged “aura” colours with disease states, and colour
visualisations with treatment. Whether healing actually works is
beyond the scope of this study. Hypotheses sought coherence
within-subjects over time and/or coherence between-subjects;
measured by non-parametric (Spearman’s) correlations. Since
healing terms such as aura cannot be easily operationally
defined, standardised colour and word stimuli elicited verbal
responses in the context of a therapeutic framework. Overall,
significant, positive but non-reliable correlations were found
between-subjects. Within-subjects correlations were also
significant, with partial reliability. Many colour and word
components within the overall analysis showed highly
reliable correlations.